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AI generated web content has got to be one of the most counterproductive things to use AI on. If I wanted an AI summary of a topic or answer to a question, a c

AI generated web content has got to be one of the most counterproductive things to use AI on. If I wanted an AI summary of a topic or answer to a question, a chatbot of choice can easily provide that for you. There’s no need for yet another piece of blogspam that isn’t introducing new information into the world. That content is already available inside the AI model. At some point, we’ll get so oversaturated with fake, generated BS that there won’t be enough high quality new information to feed them.

echelon 1y ago
Using AI generated content to mass-scale torpedo the web could be a tool to get people off of Google and existing social media platforms. I'm certainly using Google less and less these days, and even niche subreddits are getting an influx of LLM drivel. There are fantastic uses of AI, but there's an over-abundance of low-effort growth hacking at scale that is saturating existing conduits of signal. I have to wonder if some of this might be done intentionally to poison the well.
- tartoran 1y ago
  > Using AI generated content to mass-scale torpedo the web could be a tool to get people off of Google and existing social media platforms. How? Fill the web with AI generated content or just using LLMs to search for information? As more junk is poured into training LLMs this too will take a hit at some point. I remember how great the early web search was, one could find from thousands to millions of hits for request. At some point it got so polluted that it became nearly useless. It wasn't only spam that made is less useful, it was also the search providers who twisted the rules to get them to reap all the benefits.
h1fra 1y ago
hear me out: seo
saulpw 1y ago
This is pretty reductive. Many people want to pump some new thoughts they had into an AI to generate something tolerable to post on their blog. The writing isn't the point; the thoughts are. But they can't just post 200 words of bullet points (or don't feel like they can, anyway). So the AI is an assistant which takes their thoughts and makes them look acceptable for publication.
- mjr00 1y ago
  > The writing isn't the point; the thoughts are. But they can't just post 200 words of bullet points (or don't feel like they can, anyway). Who or what is clamoring for that AI-generated padding which turns 200 words of bullet points into 2000 words of prose, though? It's not like there's suddenly going to be 10x more insight, it's just 10x more slop to slog through that dilutes whatever points the writer had. If you have 200 words' worth of thoughts you want to share... you can just write 200 words.
- staticman2 1y ago
  Blogging is a pretty niche activity in general these days. I think if writing more than 200 words is painful for you, blogging probably isn't for you?
- Capricorn2481 1y ago
  > The writing isn't the point; the thoughts are This is so, so wrong. The writing is the thoughts. A person's un-articulated bullet points are not worth that much. And AI is not going to pull novel ideas out of your brain via your bullet points. It's either going to summarize them incorrectly or homogenize them into something generic. It would be like dropping acid with a friend and asking ChatGPT to summarize our movie ideas. The idea that writing is an irrelevant way to gatekeep people with otherwise brilliant ideas is not reality. You don't have to be James Baldwin, but I will not get a sense for what your ideas even are via an AI summary.
- ausbah 1y ago
  if you can’t write your thoughts as something cohesive to begin with i don’t using LLMs is going to solve your problem. writing is absolutely the point if you’re trying to communicate with text. lack of clarity is usually sign of lack of understanding imo, i see it in my own writing
- Veen 1y ago
  The writing is the point. A well-structured, well-argued, and well-written article indicates the writer has devoted considerable time to understanding and thinking through the topic — if they haven't, it quickly becomes obvious. A series of bullet points indicates the opposite, and using an AI to hide the fact that the "writer" has invested minimal cognitive effort is dishonest.
fullshark 1y ago
Anthropic cares about that, every individual content creator does not. Their goal is to win the war for attention, which is now close to zero sum with everyone on the internet and there's only 24 hours in the day.
jerf 1y ago
This is the fundamental reason why I am in favor of a ban on simply posting AI-generated content in user forums. It isn't that AI is fundamentally bad per se, and to the extent that it is problematic now, that badness may well be a temporary situation. It's because there's not a lot of utility in you as a human being basically just being an intermediary to what some AI says today. Anyone who wants that can go get it themselves, in an interactive session where they can explore the answer themselves, with the most up-to-date models. It's fundamentally no different than pasting in the top 10 Google results for a search with no further commentary; if you're going to go that route just give a letmegooglethat.com link. It's exactly as helpful, and in its own way kind of carries the same sort of snarkiness with it... "oh, are you too stupid to AI? let me help you with that". Similarly, I remember there was a lot of frothy startup ideas around using AI to do very similar things. The canonical one I remember is "using AI to generate commit messages". But I don't want your AI commit messages... again, not because AI is just Platonically bad or something, but because if I want an AI summary of your commit, I'd rather do it in two years when I actually need the summary, and then use a 2027 AI to do it rather than a 2025 AI. There's little to no utility to basically caching an AI response and freezing it for me. I don't need help with that.
- verall 1y ago
  I fully agree with this, besides that if an AI could auto-generate a commit message that I can edit to make actually correct and comprehensive, it will probably be a better, more descriptive message than whatever I come up with in usually ~3 minutes. The value is a nice starting point but the message is still confirmed by the actual expert. If it's fully auto-generated or I start "accepting" everything, then I agree it becomes completely useless.
- 9rx 1y ago
  > It's because there's not a lot of utility in you as a human being basically just being an intermediary to what some AI says today. To be fair, there has never been a lot of utility in you as a human being involved, theoretically speaking. The users do not use a forum because you, a human, are pulling knobs and turning levers somewhere behind a meaningless digital profile. Any human involvement that has been required for the software to function is merely an implementation detail. The harsh reality, as software developers continually need to be reminded of, is that users really don't care about how the software works under the hood! For today, a human posting AI-generated content to a forum is still providing all the other necessary functions required, like curation and moderation. That is just as important and the content itself, but something AI is still not very good at. A low-value poster may not put much care into that, granted, but "slop" would be dealt with the same way regardless of whether it was generated by AI or hand written by a person. The source of content is ultimately immaterial. Once AI gets good, we'll all jump to AI-driven forums anyway, so those who embrace it now will be more likely to stave off the Digg/Slashdot future.
raincole 1y ago
What we wish for: better search. What we got: more content polluting search, aka worse search.
- vouaobrasil 1y ago
  I don't think better search is exactly what we want. It would also be great to have less quantity and more quality. I think optimizing only search to make it better (including AI) only furthers the quantity aspect of content, not quality. Optimizing search or trying to make it better is the wrong goal IMO.
  - tartoran 1y ago
    Better search implies separating the wheat from the chaff. Unfortunately SEO spam took over and poisoned the whole space.
    - vouaobrasil 1y ago
      Better search implies more sophisticated search which means more opportunities to game the search.
      - tartoran 1y ago
        A more sophisticated search could also empower the users if good search was the goal.
  - qubitcoder 1y ago
    Arguably, the opposite is true. Ars Technica and others have written about this extensively [0]. Having summarized results appear immediately with links to the sources is preferable to opening multiple tabs and sifting through low-quality content and clickbait. Many real-world problems aren't as simple as "type some keywords" and get relevant results. AI excels as a "rubber duck", i.e., a tool to explore possible solutions, troubleshoot issues, discover new approaches, etc. Yes, LLMs are useful for junior developers. But for experienced developers, they're more valuable. It's a tool, just like search engines. Airplanes are also a tool. Would you limit your travel to destinations within walking distance? Or avoid checking the weather because forecasts use Bayesian probability (and some mix of machine learning)? Or avoid power tools because they deny the freedom of doing things the hard way? One can imagine that when early humans began wearing clothing to keep warm, there were naysayers who preferred to stay cold. The most creative people I know are using AI to further their creativity. Example: storytelling, world building, voice models, game development, artwork, assistants that mimic their personality, helping loved ones enjoy a better quality of life as they age, smart home automations to help their grandmother, text-to-speech for the visually impaired or those who have trouble reading, custom voice commands, and so on. Should I tell my mom to turn off Siri and avoid highlighting text and tapping "Speak" because it uses AI under the hood? I think not. They embrace it, just like creative people have always done. [0] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/05/google-is-reimagining-search-in-the-gemini-era-with-improved-ai-options/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/05/google-is-reimaginin...
xorokongo 1y ago
This only means that the web (websites and web 2.0 platforms) for public usage is becoming redundant because any type of data that can be posted on the web can now be generated by an LLM. LLMs have been only around for a short while but the web is already becoming infested with AI spam. Future generations that are not accustomed to the old pre AI web will prefare to use AI rather than the web, LLMs will eventually be able to generate all aspects of the web. The web will remain useful for private communication and general data transfer but not for surfing as we know it today. Edit to add: Projects like the Internet Archive will be even more important in the future.
- fallinditch 1y ago
  Editorial guidelines at many publications explicitly state that AI can assist with drafts, outlines, and editing, but not with generating final published stories. AI is widely used for support tasks such as: - Transcribing interviews - Research assistance and generating story outlines - Suggesting headlines, SEO optimization, and copyediting - Automating routine content like financial reports and sports recaps This seems like a reasonable approach, but even so I agree with your prediction that people will mostly interact with the web via their AI interface.
_fat_santa 1y ago
> AI generated web content has got to be one of the most counterproductive things to use AI on. For something like a blog I would agree, but I found AI to be fantastic at generating copy for some SaaS websites I run. I find it to be a great "polishing engine" for copy that I write. I will often write some very sloppy copy that just gets the point across and then feed that to a model to get a more polished version that is geared to a specific outcome. Usually I will generate a couple variants of the copy I fed it, validate it for accuracy, slap it into my CMS and run an a/b test and then stick with the content that accomplishes the specific goal of the content best based on user engagement/click through/etc.
chermi 1y ago
While I largely agree, I don't think it's quite correct to say AI generated blogs contain no new information. At least not in a practical sense. The output is a function of the the LLM and the prompt. The output contains new information assuming the prompt does. If the prompt/context contains internal information no one outside the company has access to, then a public post thus generated certainly contains information new to the public.
hk1337 1y ago
Depends on the web content. I've been using Claude to generate posts for things I am selling in Facebook Marketplace with good results.
- ysavir 1y ago
  What do you feel sets this apart from the rest?

echelon 1y ago

Using AI generated content to mass-scale torpedo the web could be a tool to get people off of Google and existing social media platforms. I'm certainly using Google less and less these days, and even niche subreddits are getting an influx of LLM drivel. There are fantastic uses of AI, but there's an over-abundance of low-effort growth hacking at scale that is saturating existing conduits of signal. I have to wonder if some of this might be done intentionally to poison the well.

tartoran 1y ago
> Using AI generated content to mass-scale torpedo the web could be a tool to get people off of Google and existing social media platforms. How? Fill the web with AI generated content or just using LLMs to search for information? As more junk is poured into training LLMs this too will take a hit at some point. I remember how great the early web search was, one could find from thousands to millions of hits for request. At some point it got so polluted that it became nearly useless. It wasn't only spam that made is less useful, it was also the search providers who twisted the rules to get them to reap all the benefits.

h1fra 1y ago

hear me out: seo

saulpw 1y ago

This is pretty reductive. Many people want to pump some new thoughts they had into an AI to generate something tolerable to post on their blog. The writing isn't the point; the thoughts are. But they can't just post 200 words of bullet points (or don't feel like they can, anyway). So the AI is an assistant which takes their thoughts and makes them look acceptable for publication.

mjr00 1y ago
> The writing isn't the point; the thoughts are. But they can't just post 200 words of bullet points (or don't feel like they can, anyway). Who or what is clamoring for that AI-generated padding which turns 200 words of bullet points into 2000 words of prose, though? It's not like there's suddenly going to be 10x more insight, it's just 10x more slop to slog through that dilutes whatever points the writer had. If you have 200 words' worth of thoughts you want to share... you can just write 200 words.
staticman2 1y ago
Blogging is a pretty niche activity in general these days. I think if writing more than 200 words is painful for you, blogging probably isn't for you?
Capricorn2481 1y ago
> The writing isn't the point; the thoughts are This is so, so wrong. The writing is the thoughts. A person's un-articulated bullet points are not worth that much. And AI is not going to pull novel ideas out of your brain via your bullet points. It's either going to summarize them incorrectly or homogenize them into something generic. It would be like dropping acid with a friend and asking ChatGPT to summarize our movie ideas. The idea that writing is an irrelevant way to gatekeep people with otherwise brilliant ideas is not reality. You don't have to be James Baldwin, but I will not get a sense for what your ideas even are via an AI summary.
ausbah 1y ago
if you can’t write your thoughts as something cohesive to begin with i don’t using LLMs is going to solve your problem. writing is absolutely the point if you’re trying to communicate with text. lack of clarity is usually sign of lack of understanding imo, i see it in my own writing
Veen 1y ago
The writing is the point. A well-structured, well-argued, and well-written article indicates the writer has devoted considerable time to understanding and thinking through the topic — if they haven't, it quickly becomes obvious. A series of bullet points indicates the opposite, and using an AI to hide the fact that the "writer" has invested minimal cognitive effort is dishonest.

fullshark 1y ago

Anthropic cares about that, every individual content creator does not. Their goal is to win the war for attention, which is now close to zero sum with everyone on the internet and there's only 24 hours in the day.

jerf 1y ago

This is the fundamental reason why I am in favor of a ban on simply posting AI-generated content in user forums. It isn't that AI is fundamentally bad per se, and to the extent that it is problematic now, that badness may well be a temporary situation. It's because there's not a lot of utility in you as a human being basically just being an intermediary to what some AI says today. Anyone who wants that can go get it themselves, in an interactive session where they can explore the answer themselves, with the most up-to-date models. It's fundamentally no different than pasting in the top 10 Google results for a search with no further commentary; if you're going to go that route just give a letmegooglethat.com link. It's exactly as helpful, and in its own way kind of carries the same sort of snarkiness with it... "oh, are you too stupid to AI? let me help you with that". Similarly, I remember there was a lot of frothy startup ideas around using AI to do very similar things. The canonical one I remember is "using AI to generate commit messages". But I don't want your AI commit messages... again, not because AI is just Platonically bad or something, but because if I want an AI summary of your commit, I'd rather do it in two years when I actually need the summary, and then use a 2027 AI to do it rather than a 2025 AI. There's little to no utility to basically caching an AI response and freezing it for me. I don't need help with that.

verall 1y ago
I fully agree with this, besides that if an AI could auto-generate a commit message that I can edit to make actually correct and comprehensive, it will probably be a better, more descriptive message than whatever I come up with in usually ~3 minutes. The value is a nice starting point but the message is still confirmed by the actual expert. If it's fully auto-generated or I start "accepting" everything, then I agree it becomes completely useless.
9rx 1y ago
> It's because there's not a lot of utility in you as a human being basically just being an intermediary to what some AI says today. To be fair, there has never been a lot of utility in you as a human being involved, theoretically speaking. The users do not use a forum because you, a human, are pulling knobs and turning levers somewhere behind a meaningless digital profile. Any human involvement that has been required for the software to function is merely an implementation detail. The harsh reality, as software developers continually need to be reminded of, is that users really don't care about how the software works under the hood! For today, a human posting AI-generated content to a forum is still providing all the other necessary functions required, like curation and moderation. That is just as important and the content itself, but something AI is still not very good at. A low-value poster may not put much care into that, granted, but "slop" would be dealt with the same way regardless of whether it was generated by AI or hand written by a person. The source of content is ultimately immaterial. Once AI gets good, we'll all jump to AI-driven forums anyway, so those who embrace it now will be more likely to stave off the Digg/Slashdot future.

raincole 1y ago

What we wish for: better search. What we got: more content polluting search, aka worse search.

vouaobrasil 1y ago
I don't think better search is exactly what we want. It would also be great to have less quantity and more quality. I think optimizing only search to make it better (including AI) only furthers the quantity aspect of content, not quality. Optimizing search or trying to make it better is the wrong goal IMO.
- tartoran 1y ago
  Better search implies separating the wheat from the chaff. Unfortunately SEO spam took over and poisoned the whole space.
  - vouaobrasil 1y ago
    Better search implies more sophisticated search which means more opportunities to game the search.
    - tartoran 1y ago
      A more sophisticated search could also empower the users if good search was the goal.
- qubitcoder 1y ago
  Arguably, the opposite is true. Ars Technica and others have written about this extensively [0]. Having summarized results appear immediately with links to the sources is preferable to opening multiple tabs and sifting through low-quality content and clickbait. Many real-world problems aren't as simple as "type some keywords" and get relevant results. AI excels as a "rubber duck", i.e., a tool to explore possible solutions, troubleshoot issues, discover new approaches, etc. Yes, LLMs are useful for junior developers. But for experienced developers, they're more valuable. It's a tool, just like search engines. Airplanes are also a tool. Would you limit your travel to destinations within walking distance? Or avoid checking the weather because forecasts use Bayesian probability (and some mix of machine learning)? Or avoid power tools because they deny the freedom of doing things the hard way? One can imagine that when early humans began wearing clothing to keep warm, there were naysayers who preferred to stay cold. The most creative people I know are using AI to further their creativity. Example: storytelling, world building, voice models, game development, artwork, assistants that mimic their personality, helping loved ones enjoy a better quality of life as they age, smart home automations to help their grandmother, text-to-speech for the visually impaired or those who have trouble reading, custom voice commands, and so on. Should I tell my mom to turn off Siri and avoid highlighting text and tapping "Speak" because it uses AI under the hood? I think not. They embrace it, just like creative people have always done. [0] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/05/google-is-reimagining-search-in-the-gemini-era-with-improved-ai-options/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/05/google-is-reimaginin...

xorokongo 1y ago

This only means that the web (websites and web 2.0 platforms) for public usage is becoming redundant because any type of data that can be posted on the web can now be generated by an LLM. LLMs have been only around for a short while but the web is already becoming infested with AI spam. Future generations that are not accustomed to the old pre AI web will prefare to use AI rather than the web, LLMs will eventually be able to generate all aspects of the web. The web will remain useful for private communication and general data transfer but not for surfing as we know it today. Edit to add: Projects like the Internet Archive will be even more important in the future.

fallinditch 1y ago
Editorial guidelines at many publications explicitly state that AI can assist with drafts, outlines, and editing, but not with generating final published stories. AI is widely used for support tasks such as: - Transcribing interviews - Research assistance and generating story outlines - Suggesting headlines, SEO optimization, and copyediting - Automating routine content like financial reports and sports recaps This seems like a reasonable approach, but even so I agree with your prediction that people will mostly interact with the web via their AI interface.

_fat_santa 1y ago

> AI generated web content has got to be one of the most counterproductive things to use AI on. For something like a blog I would agree, but I found AI to be fantastic at generating copy for some SaaS websites I run. I find it to be a great "polishing engine" for copy that I write. I will often write some very sloppy copy that just gets the point across and then feed that to a model to get a more polished version that is geared to a specific outcome. Usually I will generate a couple variants of the copy I fed it, validate it for accuracy, slap it into my CMS and run an a/b test and then stick with the content that accomplishes the specific goal of the content best based on user engagement/click through/etc.

chermi 1y ago

While I largely agree, I don't think it's quite correct to say AI generated blogs contain no new information. At least not in a practical sense. The output is a function of the the LLM and the prompt. The output contains new information assuming the prompt does. If the prompt/context contains internal information no one outside the company has access to, then a public post thus generated certainly contains information new to the public.

hk1337 1y ago

Depends on the web content. I've been using Claude to generate posts for things I am selling in Facebook Marketplace with good results.

ysavir 1y ago
What do you feel sets this apart from the rest?